


there are always wolves

by dumbkili



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Dark, Dreams, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3110825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumbkili/pseuds/dumbkili
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during "Babes in the Wood"- Greg's dream experiences are shown to us in chapter 8. This is what Wirt dreams of at the same time.</p><p>"Falling. Or are you floating? Are you even moving? Darkness, inky and thick, surrounds you. You can’t even see your hands in front of your face. Then a bright light, perfectly circular, cuts through the black, and you’re nearly blinded. You raise your arms to shield your eyes but nothing happens. Nothing moves. Do you even have a body? This has to be a dream. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. The light grows brighter and brighter until your eyes and head (do you even have a head?) begin to pound. And then, suddenly, everything stops. You open your eyes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	there are always wolves

It’s getting cold. Winter is fast approaching, and you are still wandering around this forest. How long have you been out here? Days? Weeks? It all blurs together, until you’re sure you’re never going to get back home. It’s poetic, in a way, that the cold winds would come just as you realize that you’re never getting home. Or does the wind come _because_ you realized? Who knows, in a place like this. You look down into the cold black water sliding by the hull of your makeshift boat and you feel empty inside.

 

Your brother’s positivity hasn’t wavered this whole time. He’s unfailing, unflinching; it’s going to be that much harder to break it to him that you’re both hopelessly lost. He’s talking to you, asking questions. You don’t know the answers. Your poem from days and days ago comes back to you now. It seems even more apt than it did when you wrote it; you’re more lost than ever.

 

_...A boat upon a winding river_

_Drifting further away from where I want to be_

_Who I want to be..._

 

A melody drifts across the still surface of the lake, low and menacing, yet strangely beautiful. You almost think you’re imagining it until Greg speaks up. He wants to know who’s singing, so you tell him. He deserves to know.

 

“The Beast,” you say, “It must be the Beast out there. The obsidian cricket of our inevitable twilight, singing our requiem.” _Inevitable twilight…_ you are going to die in this forest, aren’t you? Or else you’ll become part of it, somehow.  Become edelwoods or child servants or pumpkin people. There’s no way out. You’re lost, lost, lost.

 

The boat bumps against the shore and Greg’s tugging you along, acting loud and ridiculous and you just can’t take it anymore. You snap.

 

“Can we please stop pretending we're gonna get home? Can we admit we're lost for good?” You’re being too harsh and you know it but you can’t stop. You’re tired, and cold, and you haven’t seen Beatrice in days- does that matter? No, it doesn’t matter, she betrayed you both, she can go to hell- and anyway, the kid is working your last nerve. You let him take the reins for a while- let him see how hard it is to make decisions, to keep you both safe, to keep walking forward even when every fiber of your being is calling you back- _stop. Breathe._ You’re tired suddenly. You’re so, so tired. _Go to sleep_. You slide your back down the tree. _Go to sleep._ You lie down in the root of the tree and curl up tight. You’re just drifting off when you feel several leaves settle around you. Greg lies down next to you and then… you’re asleep.

 

_Falling. Or are you floating? Are you even moving? Darkness, inky and thick, surrounds you. You can’t even see your hands in front of your face. Then a bright light, perfectly circular, cuts through the black, and you’re nearly blinded. You raise your arms to shield your eyes but nothing happens. Nothing moves. Do you even have a body? This has to be a dream. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. The light grows brighter and brighter until your eyes and head (do you even have a head?) begin to pound. And then, suddenly, everything stops. You open your eyes._

 

You're sitting in a hard plastic chair, the curve of it digging into your back. You scuff your worn sneakers against the linoleum floor beneath you and-  _wait. Stop. Sneakers?_ You look up, trying to get your bearings. _Where am I?_ It looks like a hallway in a hospital, but it's totally empty. No doctors, no nurses rushing to and fro. You're completely alone, and right across from you is an open door to a private room.

 

 

"Wirt?"

It's your mother's voice, coming from inside the room. She sounds sick, almost- weaker than she normally would be.

"Wirt? Are you there?"

Your grip the sides of the chair tighter. This is obviously a dream, and you suspect it isn't the good kind. You don't want to get up and look, to push open the door and see whatever horrors your mind has spun up behind it.

"Wirt, come in here." You bite your lip. It's not gonna happen. Your leg starts to shake up and down nervously. There's a sound to your right, and you whip your head towards it. One of the bright fluorescent lights at the end of the hallway flickers once, twice, and goes out altogether. Then again, the sound- this time on your left, like the lightest footstep against the floor. You turn your head. The light on the end of that side flickers and dies.

"Wirt. Come in here, _now_." It’s your mother’s voice, definitely, and it’s kind and well meaning, but it's also the kind of voice you don't say no to. You slowly uncurl your fingers from the edges of the chair and stand up, but you don't walk forward. You can't bring yourself to.

"Faster than that, please," your mom says, and it's just her, just your mom, but still you hesitate. And then the lights start slamming off, one after the other, faster and faster until there's just three still on- the one above you and the ones on either side. Outside of the circle of light is pure blackness. It's as if the hallway doesn't even exist anymore- and wow, you have never wanted to wake up from a dream so badly. But that's just it, isn't it? It's just a dream. You can't be hurt, in dreams. At least, that’s what you tell yourself.

Slowly, painstakingly, you drag yourself to the doorway. You push it open and see a normal, well lit hospital room. Your mother is lying in the bed nearest the windows, her face turned to look outside. The windows show nothing but inky darkness, but that’s the only thing that reads wrong with the scene. She’s holding something in her arms, wrapped in blankets. You decide that maybe you should just stay over here, that maybe she won’t notice that you’ve come inside. You’ve almost convinced yourself that she isn’t going to acknowledge you when she speaks.

“Wirt, please come here,” she says, turning her head to look at you, and she looks so normal and kind and just so  _motherly_ that you almost want to cry. You haven’t seen her since the morning before you got stuck in the Unknown, and you haven’t realized how much you miss her until right now. “Don’t you want to meet him?”

You’re walking toward her almost without noticing that you’re moving. “Don’t I want to meet who?” you ask, confused.

“Your little brother, of course,” she says, and your heart thuds.

“No, no, no nononono,” you stammer out, “This is wrong, this isn’t right-”

Her smile dims a little bit. “What’d you mean, hon? His name is Gregory. He’s perfectly healthy-”

“No,” you interrupt, “I wasn’t here for this, don’t you remember? I refused to come, I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to see this! I’m supposed to be at home right now! I’m supposed to be home. I want to go home.” Your voice breaks on the last “home” and you groan in frustration. This dream has gone from weird to scary to awful, and you just want to wake up.

“Oh, honey,” your mother says, “You’re not going home. Don’t you understand that?”

“What?” You say, hoping you misheard.

“You’re part of the forest now, boy,” She says, and the blanket in her arms falls away, empty. Her eyes start to glow, and glow, and _glow_ , and the lights are flickering overhead. You back up, heart in your throat. She swings her legs out of bed and the moment her bare feet hit the ground, all the lights die. You’re alone in an empty void with this thing in your mother’s skin, and you almost can’t breathe. Shadows swirl around her legs, obscuring her, absorbing her, until she is nothing but a pair of glowing white eyes.

“The forest claims what belongs to it,” The thing says, but it’s voice is deep and layered and strange, and it hits something primal in your brain, something that says run, leave, get out of there while you still have legs, but there’s nowhere to go. You’re stuck. “You are never going to leave. And really,” the thing says (and you think that if it had a mouth it would be grinning, all sharp teeth and bloodstained gums), “Why would you want to?”

 

“W-what do you mean?” You manage to force out the question around your fear. You wish you had your cloak or your hat, something to make you feel brave and powerful, like a knight facing down a dragon. In your sweater and sneakers, you just feel small.

“What’s waiting for you out there, over the wall?” The creature asks, and for a second it’s eyes flash with rings of color, blue and red and yellow at once. The shadows twist and move and suddenly Sara is standing there, out of her Halloween costume, and her legs fade into the darkness and her eyes are glowing white.

“A girl who doesn’t love you?” She says in the voice of the thing. “A girl who would never love you?” She grins and reaches out a hand into the darkness, and a glowing-eyed Jason steps forward to take it.

“The boy she prefers over you?” Not-Jason says. “That’s what you’re so desperate to get home to?”

You raise your trembling hands to your hair, pulling on it and shaking your head. “No, no, stop it- stop it!” You shout, and you shut your eyes tight. You wish you could block out the sound of the creature’s laughter, layered and doubled over itself, coming from the mouths of the apparitions.

“If you’re not doing it for them, then who are you doing it for?” The shadow-thing asks, mockingly. “Your mother? Your stepfather?” As it speaks the words, the people it names step forward from the darkness. Their eyes glitter with cold white light.

“No!” You say, and you’re really in danger of slipping into a panic attack now, so fast is your breath and heart. “No, I’m just- I just want to wake up! Let me wake up!”

“Or are you doing it for none of them?” The creature continues, as if it hadn’t heard you, and all the visions fade back into the void as one. “Do you want to get _to_ something… or _away_?” It’s eyes flash again. “Away from bluebirds? Away from brothers?”

And a ghostly Greg steps out of the shadows with a white-eyed Beatrice on his shoulder.

“No…” You whisper, but it lacks force. You don’t want to see this. You don’t want to see Greg speak in the voice of this monster. Thankfully (or not) it’s Beatrice that opens her mouth.

“These woods are good for finding things, Wirt,” she says, and it’s not her, it’s the creature, “But they’re also good for losing things, too. Things…” She trails off, then turns and taps Greg’s teapot with her beak. “...Or people.”

“Wait,” You say, and here’s where this nightmare-being has made a mistake. “If you’re saying that I would leave Greg here, that I would abandon him-” You have to stop for a moment, to plan out your words, so great is your disgust. “I would never leave my brother in this place. _Never_.”

“Your brother!” Not-Beatrice laughs incredulously. “Keep in mind, Wirt- he’s only half of one.” Not-Greg still hasn’t said anything, gazing blankly at you with his empty, empty eyes. You look at him, and you feel something true and certain click into place inside of you.

“He’s my brother,” you say, the calmest you’ve been since this whole thing started. “He’s my brother, and I won’t leave him.”

Your fingers start to feel numb and cold, and you clench your hands into fists, facing down the creature. You exhale, and a white cloud of air comes out of your mouth before dissipating in the blackness. Slowly, you start to feel your other body, your real body- a sort of second sense of it, lying on cold ground.

“I’m going to wake up soon,” you say, and you’re proud that your voice doesn’t crack. “And when I do, you’re going to be just a dream. You’re not real.” And, cape or no cape, you start to feel less like a mouse and more like a giant. This isn’t real. It never was. You can handle this.

But then the thing does something you did not expect, something that shakes you down to your core: It laughs.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” And it laughs again, and the shadows begin to lighten from black to deep gray, getting lighter and lighter every second. You feel colder, and you hug your arms closer around yourself.

“What do you mean?” You shout up to the thing, but it’s fading away with the dream.

“Wirt?” It’s Greg’s voice, high and clear, and you instinctively look to the Not-Greg standing before you, but he’s melting away into mist, and so is the Not-Beatrice. “Wirt, wake up.”

“Greg, I’m trying to sleep,” You say, suddenly desperate to get an explanation and hoping your words carry over to your real body. “What did you mean?” You shout again, but you get no answer.

A song reaches your ears across the now-empty dreamscape, low and haunting.

_Sorrow and fear_

_Are easily forgotten_

_When you submit_

_To the soil_

_Of the earth…_

 

Something brushes against your ankles and you flinch looking down at the branches winding themselves around and around your legs, growing fast and thick, the leaves red as blood and the wood dripping with a dark, oily liquid. You shout, trying to struggle, trying to get away, but the leaves wind around your wrists, your chest-

“Take care of Ronald for me-”

-they’re climbing up your neck now over your eyes and mouth and you can’t breath, you can’t move-

You wake up.

And Greg is gone.

****  
  


 


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